Charlie Munger: Less Wrong > More Right

Charlie Munger, when asked how he deals with upsets and failures better than other people:

I have so many fewer, its very simple.

Its a classic Munger quip – simple & clever, however, his thought process is anything but. Logic here is that the way to get to the right answer (decision) is to “Invert, always invert.” (which he borrowed from mathematician Carl Jacobi). Better to be less wrong than to be more right, that way, it forces us to see things as they really are. And when he does decide to place a bet – a betwith “one chance in two of winning but which pays three to one” – he goes all in.

….at the end of the Q&A, some more gem before he departs:

Everyone is trying to be (act) smarter, all I am trying to do is to be “non-idiotic”, slightly more consistently.

Nobody survives open heart surgery better than the guy who didn’t need the procedure in the first place.